Embrace science over ignorance on GMOs

August 13, 2014

Scientists may not be right all the time but neither is government nor the public.

Science often outpaces society, sometimes by decades or even centuries in the case of evolution. Sure, we still have millions of uninformed members of the public in this country who believe that evolution is just a theory, but within the scientific community the issue is largely settled.

The genetically modified organism debate is very similar and is nothing new. Whenever you have a new technology or scientific theory, the public generally gets hysterical. Threats are exaggerated, doomsday prophets preach about the dangers to society and the public, being completely uninformed (and in the case of GMOs, grossly misinformed), doesn't know who to trust so it follows the crowd.

If we are going by simple odds and probabilities, science has a remarkable track record of being right compared to the crowd and doomsday cults. In fact, it is really no contest. The anti-science crowd has almost invariably been wrong on basically every single issue in human history.

So who should we trust? Science, which is constantly evolving, admitting and acknowledging errors and improving, or the anti-science crowds, which have a statistical probability of being right that approaches zero?

Please, Maui, don't be ignorant and proud of it. Educate and inform yourselves. Teach the keiki to embrace science, not ignorance.